Golden Pulley Award 2017 | Win a Roasting Scholarship

WHAT IT IS:The first-ever scholarship award of its kind, the Golden Pulley Award seeks to grow the roasting community through a unique program to help baristas and other coffee professionals successfully create a coffee roasting business. The winner will be granted a subsidized one-year membership to Pulley Oakland, a collaborative, membership-based roasting space in the Bay Area, where they will receive free roasting time, mentorship, and financing to procure green coffee.

WHO YOU ARE:A passionate, focused, goal-driven, working barista or other coffee pro with or without roasting experience, who dreams of creating or developing your own coffee brand or roasting business. You ideally already work in coffee, in a cafe (your own or someone else's) where you'll be able to feature your roasted coffee once you've got the chops. Or perhaps you'll have already convinced a couple supermarkets, restaurants, or bakeries to carry your amazing future coffee, as attaining an outlet for your roasted coffee is the hardest part of getting started. For logistical reasons, you already live in or near the Bay Area. Current members and employees of Pulley Collective are ineligible.

WHO WE ARE:Pulley Collective was established in 2013 in Brooklyn, New York, as the world's first craft coffee roasting incubator, supporting small-to medium-sized companies seeking to expand into roasting their own coffee without the usual infrastructure barriers. Pulley's waterfront warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn, helped launch roasting programs for companies like Joe Coffee, Ninth Street Espresso, NEAT, Parlor Coffee, and many more. In 2016, Pulley expanded to the West Coast, where it now operates a 6,500-square-foot membership roasting facility in a historic West Oakland building, where members have use of Loring and Diedrich roasters, and soon, a Probat UG22. Pulley also maintains close relationships with green coffee farmers, exporters, and importers (including Nordic Approach), and has a family relationship to the award-winning Fincas Mierisch farms in Nicaragua and Honduras.

HOW TO ENTER:To enter to win the Golden Pulley Award, applicants should submit a video essay no longer than four minutes demonstrating why they think they are the best candidate for this roasting scholarship. Entrants should consider the following points:

Who will buy your roasted coffee?

What will make you a successful small business?

Where do you work and what do you enjoy most about it and your coffee experiences?

Why will you be the most successful candidate?

The winning candidate will be the best in showing and telling about their passion for coffee, desire to roast, and why they are ready to start a business.

All essays are due by March 1, 2017, and should be submitted via email to oakland@pulleycollective.com with the subject line Golden Pulley Video.